UNITARIANISM
646
UNITARIANS
territorial districts have been formed also local confer- ences with more frequent meetings, which have been successful in fostering fellowship and co-operation, and a more devout and earnest religious life.
Without otlicr ecclesiastical authority, the govern- ment of the churches and their usages and modes of worship are purely Congregational. The rites of bap- tism and of the Lord's supper are recognised and ob- served, not as having mystic value or binding authori- ty, but as having spiritual worth and influence. The denominational Year-book for 1880 reports 340 churches, of which 2-10 are in New England, chiefly in Massachu- setts, and 100 mainly in the West; 400 ministers, 20 local conferences, besides a number of organizations of purely benevolent aim and purpose. Two theological schools are sustained — -one at Cambridge, founded in 1816, having four professors and about twenty students, and a library of 18,500 volumes, while the large Univer- sity library of 240,000 volumes is also open to its use. About $140,000 have recently been added to its endow- ment fund to increase its corps of professors. The Theological School at Meadville, Pa., was formed in 1844, and has four resident professors, 15,000 volumes in its library, and about twenty students.
The periodicals of the denomination are the Unita- rian Revieir, the Cfiristian Register, now in its fifty- ninth year; The DayKprinc;, a Sunday-school paper, all published in Boston, while several smaller organs are published elsewhere. The denomination is rich in its literature, especially in the direction of practical and devout religious sentiment. The works of Channing, now widely circulated among English-speaking people all over the world, are translated in part or entire into the Dutch and German, French, Italian, Swedish, Hun- garian, Icelandic, and Kussian languages. There may also be mentioned as leading Unitarian preachers and writers, Henry Ware (father and son), James Walker, Theodore Parker, Edmund H. Sears, Orville Dewey, William H. Furness, Henry W. Bellows, James Free- man Clarke, Frederick H. Hedge, and Andrew P. Pea- body. Unitarian writers are also largely represented in the walks of history and literature in America as in England. It may be added that Unitarian sentiments are held substantially by '-Universalists," "Christians," "Hicksite Quakers," and "Progressive Friends."
III. Doctrinal Vieies. — In seeking the present form of Unitarian faith, it is needless to recount the specula- tions of earlier times. The tenets of Sabellius and Paul of Samosata and Arius, also of Servetus and the Socini, in their special forms sharing the crudities of contem- poraneous thought, have largely passed away. They are not to be quoted as authority. They are simply ill the line of historical progress, agreeing only in the single fundamental thought that God is one, and Jesus Christ a created and subordinate being. Unitarianism is characteristically not a fixed dogmatic statement, but a movement of ever-enlarging faith. It welcomes inquiry, progress, and diversity of individual thought in the unity of spiritual fellowship. With faith in the unity of God as its key-note, it asserts the unity of all truth in nature, history, experience, and the Bible; the unity of the Church as based on character, not on dog- ma; and the unity of spiritual life in this world and the next. Its leading principles are, first, the freedom of ever\' individual soul to seek the highest truth and to obey it; and, second, that character is the test of Chris- tian discipleship. Unitarians declare life, not dogma, to be the essence of Christianity. They deem Chris- tianity to be essentially a reasonable religion, according with the truths of nature, instructing reason and ap- pealing to it as interpreter and judge. They hold it to be a progressive religion; that its principles, like the axioms of mathematics, are eternally true, but that its germs unfold with the increasing intelligence of man- kind. Right belief they deem important for right liv- ing, and they emphasize the value of righteousness as establishing the kingdom of God on earth, and as alone
fitting the soul for his kingdom above. They refuse to formulate their belief in fixed creeds of ecclesias- tical and exclusive authority; because these never set- tle open questions, but only start fresh controversy; because they limit in(juiry and hinder progress; and be- cause they make dogma instead of character, and opin- ion instead of spiritual purpose, the bases and tests of fellowship. Yet, while refusing any authoritative creed statement, there is an unwritten consensus of faith in which Unitarians are substantially agreed. Thej' believe in the one God as the Creator of the universe and Father of all souls; a Father who wills man's welfare, desiring that not even the least shall iierish ; the Fatherly Frienil in all worlds, who does not wait for forgiveness and favor to be purchased, but freely pours forth blessing on all who will accept it ; Father of the sinner as of the saint, seeking every wanderer with his pursuing love, and punishing the erring not for his pleasure, but for their profit, that they may become partakers of his holi- ness. Unitarians believe in man as naturally neither saint nor sinner; that his nature is not corrupt and ruined, but undeveloped and incomplete ; that he in- herits tendencies to good as well as to evil, and that he is sinful only as he knowingh' and wilfully does wrong; that he needs regeneration, the unfolding and renewal of his spiritual nature, which he experiences through obedience to the truth, under that divine in- fluence which is called the Holy Spirit ; that, as a child of the Infinite, allied to the Supreme Goodness by ties that cannot be sundered, having in him a spark of divinity that makes his ultimate redemp- tion an inextinguishable hope, he yet needs to be taught and inspired of God, but with the aid of the di- vine grace, which is his birthright privilege, he is able to climb to celestial summits. Unitarians believe in Jesus Christ, as the four evangelists describe him, as at once Son of God and Son of man. They care little for metaphj'sical speculation about the mystery of his nature, but emphasize his word and life as a practical help for human salvation. They hold that he is our Saviour as he becomes to us the Light of the World, the Fountain of Living Water, and the Bread of Life ; our Saviour by illustrating the eternal principles of right, "f inspiring his followers to holiness, and imparting to them true life more abundantly; our Saviour so far as he leads and helps us to be large-hearted, truth- seeking, pure, loving, and devout; that he came into the •world to bear testimony to the truth, and was here not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and that he proved himself humanity's Lord and Leader by his di- vine helpfulness. Under the infiuence of elevated < views of man's spiritual nature, affirming his innate power of ajjprehending religious truth, Unitarianism, in declaring the humanity of Christ, does not bring Jesus down, but lifts humanity up. It asserts that Jesus was purely human only to show that human nature itself is, in the phrase of Athanasius, homoonsian, of the same substance with God, and that Jesus is the best expres- sion of that divine humanity which is the birthright and promised destiny of all souls. While they are jeal- ous of ecclesiastical authority or dictation, and perpet- ually refuse to limit their belief by formula, the Uni- tarians have, in public assembly of the American Uni- tarian Association, and in representative meetings of their national and local conferences, repeatedly reaf- firmed their attitude of Christian discipleship, and shown that they hold themselves to be a body of be- lievers upon the Christian foundation and within the Christian Church. They deem the mind of Christ the best index of Christianity'. For the sources of Uni- tarian thought, therefore, they refer to Unitarian litera- ture, more especiall}' to the New Test., and supremely to the word and life of Jesus Christ, (IJ. K. S.)